TOKYO: Tokyo stocks closed lower on Friday, with investors disheartened by falls on Wall Street and focus shifting to key US jobs data due later in the day.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 index dropped 1.68 percent, or 463.65 points, to 27,199.74 while the broader Topix index ended down 1.29 percent, or 25.06 points, at 1,915.40.
The dollar fetched 147.96 yen in Asian trade against 148.25 yen in New York late Thursday.
The overnight decline in US shares came a day after the US Federal Reserve announced another sharp interest rate increase and said it was premature to think about pausing the hikes.
That was followed shortly by a similar big move by the Bank of England as part of the fight against inflation.
“Sell-orders are dominating the market on worries that US rate hikes will continue for a while,” Daiwa Securities said in a commentary.
But the Nikkei index stopped falling at around 27,100 levels as trade became nervous ahead of US jobs data, the brokerage said.
Markets are watching the payroll figures, and “of importance will be average hourly earnings... to see whether the very acute labour market tightness is easing,” Tapas Strickland, senior analyst of National Australia Bank, said in a commentary.
Among individual shares, Mitsubishi Motors soared 18.01 percent to 616 yen after it revised up its full-year operating profit forecast.
Telecommunication firm KDDI dropped 4.06 percent to 4,255 yen after its second-quarter operating profit was worse than market consensus.
Nippon Yusen lost 3.48 percent to 2,563 yen, after the shipping firm reported rises in operating and net profits that were below market expectations.
Its rival Kawasaki Kisen slipped 1.22 percent to 2,187 yen, after it revised up its full-year profit forecast but it came in below market expectations.
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